


Eitolate

by Symphony_Hawthorn



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Allura - Freeform, Character Death, Dreams, Gen, Introspection, Lance (Voltron) Angst, Lance (Voltron)-centric, Season/Series 06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2019-05-27 17:47:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15029897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Symphony_Hawthorn/pseuds/Symphony_Hawthorn
Summary: Tio Marco was there.All smiles and bones full of  strength.A head of hair.Tio Marco died of Cancer seven years ago.Nine now.  He thinks.Time is calculated differently out in the black. The endless expanse. Awash with colour, and awash with none.But Tio is there.





	Eitolate

**Author's Note:**

> Been thinking about this a bit since S6 was aired. 
> 
> Also not a sober writing event.

Tio Marco was there. 

 

All smiles and bones full of  strength.

 

A head of hair.

 

Tio Marco died of Cancer seven years ago.

 

Nine now.  He thinks.

 

Time is calculated differently out in the black. The endless expanse. Awash with colour, and awash with none.

 

But Tio is there.

 

And he misses him still; seven and nine years later. 

 

Each night as he sleeps, and he knows that he does. He sees him. Each night in that slow snapshot of decay that cancer brought.  In no place familiar but experienced. 

 

They smile and laugh. Cheeks aching as stories are shared, so fresh, like seeing antique photographs. 

 

Fingers numb on waking. Soon toes to follow. 

 

Tio Marco just smiles. Tio Marco died of cancer seven and nine years ago. His Mama cried for days over her brother. He wonders at times why it is never his father; died of stroke when he was five…

 

He supposes he was too young to remember him well enough.

 

Tio Marco encourages him to tell; so maybe they will not drown. He doesn't know what he means. 

 

He wakes short of breath and in the solitude of travel he finds it hard to catch; eyes weak. 

 

That night he tells Tio Marco how he wants everyone to meet the family. That he will visit Tio proper. Lay flowers again as he hasn't done before the garrison. 

Tio Marco smiles and asks how Marco, his brother named after him, is. 

 

He finds he cannot give an answer. He doesn’t know. 

 

When he wakes he cannot seem to remember Marco’s face.

 

He keeps a good face in waking. The fire, burning, questions. Not worry, but concern.  He finds it takes him a moment to remember.

 

Tio Marco died of cancer; he couldn’t remember mama’s, his own sister’s, face. When he visited Tio Marco with her seven and nine years ago. 

 

They rest on a planet, still so far from home. Everyone is gathered around Shiro; bright and luminescent, it hurts to look at him.  All laugh as they share stories of home. Both Allura and Coran are more eager to learn Earth customs. Croan shifts his ears to a hideous form. He laughs. It takes too long to chatach is breath. 

 

In the night, Tio does not come and he finds his gaze meeting Shiro over the fire. Questions stall on his lips. In silence, he wonders what it was like. Spirit and body divided. That spirit exists without body. If it was a trait only granted by craft huen from meteor, void, and quintessence. He thinks of the ocean, now ice, impenetrable, and the fire, volcanic ash unbreathable, and wonders if such a  fate is for him. 

 

In the morning they set off, his legs as weak as his breath.

 

He finds it hard to join the open chat the others  have. Realizing how far he has drifted from once firm understanding of each other. Perhaps, it was one of his own making; influenced by the environment of the garrison. 

 

There are others now freed by their lack of constraints and shared  experience. Conversations happen faster than he can process them. It is not new.  

  
  


It feels like he is bleeding but he cannot bring himself to stop the flow. Had Tio Marco felt this way? As Cancer spread from his bones to his brain? As his mama cried tears, whispering in desperate tones to his father who could no longer hear.  He wondered if they could see as his mama had. Stiff hands, and weak breath. Volcanic ash questioned, unsure and wondering, incapable of understanding and ice stood firm, refusing to see and hear. 

 

Tio Marco came again, the place now familiar though experience.  

 

“No one can see”.

 

Tio Marco was weak now, hair gone, and bones weak. His brain would follow.  Sage in his knowledge, Tio Marco informed him.

 

In the morning contacts on Olkarion told them of a distress signal. 

 

He was useless.

 

Exhaustion he claimed. Traveling he said. 

 

Admonished, but accepted. 

 

They had beds for the night and before parting, he looked to Shiro. Again, he found no acknowledgement.   

 

Perhaps, it was meant only for those not covered in ash and blocked by ice.  

 

His breath wheezed through his chest. He could not remember why. 

 

The morning brought breakfast and with it discussion. Garrison memory filled his mind but conversation connected to it did not. Like a stone on a river, he was cast. Topics passing before he could comment. It took him a moment too long to stand and the room was empty because of it.  He could not quite pinpoint the burning heat that turned around his brain and left him wondering just how to leave the room. 

 

The night brought nothing as aches skipped over vertebrae. Each jolt, settling in the base of his skull making him wonder why ice became glacier.  He reached in the dark. Void providing nothing to grasp. He could not gain purchase on such a sheer surface. It hurt to think, ash threatening to smother. It was hard to breath.  They became separate, as he ricochet off of one to the other. Ash covered him in question

and glacial ice refused him.  He would have no home.

 

He knew this.

 

Trapped. 

 

Nothing before him and nothing behind.

 

Would they leave him to the black void? Bathed in colour and nothingness?

 

Trapped in  the confines of whatever they could spare? An empty shell to see the ends without the function to record it? The thought sent a temor through him.  

 

Surely they would remember him. As his mama cried over his Tio, as they kept a photo he could not remember the details of, on the wall of his father. 

 

In the days to come none looked to him. Laughter over stories, experiences, and animals filled their interest. 

 

Tio  Marco did not come. 

 

His attempts to gain Shiro’s attention failing more each time as his legs felt numb and jolts over his spine kept him awake.  

 

It would be weeks yet until earth. Sicopalian movements.  Tio Marco came to him. 

 

Experience of the endlessness breeding familiarity. 

 

“It might be better if  you go before earth.”

 

He came again.

 

“ Elena…” his mama, “has cried enough”.

 

And again the following.

 

“Its okay, its okay, its okay - “   he fell into Tios arms, weak and hairless as they were.  

 

Its okay. Its okay. Its okay. Shiro could not see; he could not speak with breath as precious as it was. Allura could not know with as much as she had gave. Exhaustion weighed on him as lighting danced between each node in his spine. He would prod at a glacier he did not understand as ash covered his bones. He found himself often too warm. The heat that built and weaken in his bones no match for the ash he could no  longer recognize. 

 

It was days… quintants? A quintant was a day, or was it just less than a day? Or more? He skipped through conversations.  The garrison meant nothing in the void. Words spun around him as he lost myself in the colours beyond the view screen. Still weeks… movements?... out from…

 

Tio Marco came again and beyond his weakened from he knew nothing else.

 

He could see Allura on the feed. Oceanic visage as she mapped the route of their travel. No longer did he do more than follow.  Ash covering him. 

 

His breaths drew shallow. 

 

Tio Marco was a name. 

 

Bones weak and bereft of hair.

 

“Its okay…”

 

He did not know if Allura knew the feed was open. All he knew was of glacial cold and suffocating ash. She could not know. The ice told him as much. He must stay way. 

 

He wanted to connect with Shiro once more but could not remember much more than  a name and white. Was Shiro more than a meaning? He could not remember.

 

The garrison brought tears. He did not know why it was two faces. He did not know why but knew both were never within reach. 

 

Tio Marco died of cancer. He dies of…

 

He is unsure.

 

Memory is fleeting  as things shut down.

 

Ash threatens to cover him entirely.

 

He just wanted someone to remember.

 

Tio Marco… it was better this way.

 

It was hard. He would be covered soon. 

 

Breath shallow  and weak as time unknown spent itself.

 

The Ash knew a voice.

 

It was not his and time would move with it.

 

“Hey…”

 

The lighting in his spine was spent. 

 

“I was wondering…”

 

The ash had buried his ears.  A memory, beyond his knowing was jubilant.

 

“Coran-- you--”

 

He was covered.

 

Silent. 

 

“Hey--”

 

Tio Marco was there.

 

“Hey --”

 

Endless black and endless expanse of colour…

 

“Lance what---”

 

The Glacier did not let him pass.

 

“Lance are you--”

 

Ash smothered him. He did not belong.

 

“--okay?”.

 

The ash turned to ember and to flame again. 

 

The displaced stream nothing more than a memory. 


End file.
